Yomeishu to sell restaurant and bakery businesses to Yamada Bee Farm as its core business moves under Tsumura

What has been decided

On 13 May 2026, Yomeishu Seizo, a maker of medicinal liquor, announced that it would sell its food-and-drink and retail businesses, including restaurants and bakeries, to Yamada Bee Farm. Yomeishu Seizo is a company with a factory in Komagane, Nagano Prefecture. Yamada Bee Farm is headquartered in Okayama Prefecture and is known for its honey products and health foods. The businesses being sold were to be moved into a new company, with all of its shares to be transferred to Yamada Bee Farm by around the end of July. The price has not been disclosed. The sale covers six outlets in Tokyo and Nagano Prefecture. In addition, it was decided that some facilities at Kurasuwa no Mori, the commercial complex next to the Komagane factory, would be suspended.

A change in management behind the sale

A tender offer (TOB) for Yomeishu Seizo’s shares by the investment company Reno has already been completed. Reno is a Tokyo company linked to the investor Yoshiaki Murakami and others. The company was to hold an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders and then delist. At the time of the May announcement, the expectation was that Tsumura, a major maker of kampo medicines, would then acquire all of the shares and make the company a wholly owned subsidiary. Kampo medicines are drugs based on traditional Japanese herbal formulas. The product most likely to benefit from teaming up with Tsumura is the flagship Yakuyo Yomeishu. For that reason, the policy of selling or scaling back the food-and-drink and retail businesses had already been settled. Yamada Bee Farm, with its strength in health foods, was judged to be a suitable buyer.

What is “medicinal liquor”?

Yakuyo Yomeishu is a sweet, dark liquor made by steeping herbs, tree bark, roots and other crude drugs in alcohol. It is a different category from sake or shochu, but the idea of drawing plant ingredients into alcohol is very similar to the herbal liqueurs and botanical bitters traditionally made in European monasteries. With this restructuring, the long-established brand is giving up peripheral businesses such as catering and retail. It will concentrate on raising the value of medicinal liquor in the health and pharmaceutical fields.

For European readers, there are two points of interest. The first is how product development and overseas marketing may change now that a traditional Japanese alcohol brand is coming under the wing of a pharmaceutical company. The second is that Japanese alcohol includes, besides sake and shochu, a culture of herb-infused drinks made to look after the body. When you come across Japanese herbal liqueurs or umeshu in a shop in Europe, looking at what they have in common with, and how they differ from, local herbal spirits will reveal the cultural background of each.